Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly feature, Analyst Angle. We’ve collected a group of the industry’s leading analysts to give their outlook on the hot topics in the wireless industry.
Brazilian telecom regulator Anatel is looking to implement a new rule that guarantees customers the automatic cancellation of telecom services (fixed telephony, mobile telephony, broadband and pay-TV), without the need to interact directly with a company representative. The new rule is expected to be enacted by February.
According to the rule, the cancellation process will have to be made either via a call center through an audible response unit or via the company’s website. However, operators will have 48 hours to contact the client to explain the loyalty clauses and fines applied in case of a breach of contract.
For some time operators have made the cancellation process difficult, with customers spending hours on the phone and months trying to cancel telecom services. From the total complaints Anatel receives per month, an impressive 6.5% are from clients that are not able to cancel a telecom service.
With the new regulation, carriers will need to better serve clients if they do not want to see their churn rates increase. Customers will be less willing to tolerate low quality services, recurring charging mistakes, long waiting queues at call centers and other problems that they have had to face with telecom service providers.
Quality of service and customer care will be essential to retain customers. Operators will need to stop talking about putting clients at first place and actually doing it. Customer experience management will play a key role in this scenario. Operators will need to start recognizing customers rather than network elements. What does a charging error mean, a billing issue or an unsatisfied customer?
If operators do not change their strategy, the telecom market landscape could change dramatically. Challengers and new entrants will be in a strong position to allure unsatisfied clients that are currently attached to their service provider due to the complex process of cancelling service.
Operators looking to reduce the impact of the new rule must have a CEM approach that enables them to have a clear view on issues affecting their operational efficiency and quality, allowing a proactive and real-time decision making process. It is crucial for service providers to be able to react fast to any problem in order to solve or minimize problems impacting their clients.
In addition, carriers must define KPIs that enable them to monitor different metrics, enabling a holistic customer view. It is fundamental that operators manage users during their lifetime to understand issues affecting customer experience in order to make the improvements necessary to increase loyalty.
Marceli Passoni is a senior analyst with Informa Telecoms & Media, covering Latin America. She examines the region’s operators’ strategies and performance, ongoing regulatory issues, networks deployments, new products, service launches and analyzes the key trends in the region. Passoni regularly writes country profiles, case studies and in-depth analysis for Informa Telecoms & Media’s Intelligence Center. She also writes on Latin American issues for the research service Global Mobile Daily and Informa’s reports. Passoni holds a degree in Business Administration from PUC and is a post-graduate in Management Services at ESPM in São Paulo.
